Page:Life and Works of Abraham Lincoln, v1.djvu/89

Rh State where social, as well as political, equality prevailed. Migration is an American institution. Instances are not rare of men who have actually lived in a dozen different States; and California, Oregon, and Washington are largely peopled by men who commenced their tours of migration in the Atlantic States, and by slow approaches ultimately reached the ultimate limits of Western civilization. Andrew Jackson, William Henry Harrison, James K. Polk, Zachary Taylor, Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant, and Benjamin Harrison were emigrants.Thomas Lincoln likewise had abundant cause to leave Indiana. Milk-sickness is given as the cause by Dennis Hanks. Nancy Hanks Lincoln, and her uncle and aunt, had all died of it within two months of each other, and as Dennis naïvely says: "All of my relatives died of that disease on Little Pigeon Creek, Spencer County. ... I was determined to leave and hunt a country where milk-sick was not; this is the reason for leaving Indiana."

Activity, bustle, and excitement reigned in and about the Lincoln cabin, near Gentryville, on the morning of February 15, 1830. An early breakfast had been hastily despatched by the light of some blazing fagots, by thirteen people, and each of them was engaged in guiding events toward an orderly and symmetrical exodus from the scene of so many melancholy experiences.

The two "gals" (as they were called) were tying up rough bedclothes, packing dishes, skillets, pots and pans, and "toting" bundles to an extremely shabby and primitive vehicle, in which the patriarch of the household was awkwardly storing them away. John D. Johnston, Dennis